The idea for this gift came from a conversation with my brother-in-law, who was talking about how much he had liked the Far Side daily calendar. My sister used to get these for my dad for years. Until they stopped making them. Who knows why…

One day while wasting time in Half Price Books, I found a copy of Gary Larson’s Cows of Our Planet. And decided, why not make my own?

Even though I’m using a cut-up cartoon book, you can make your day by day calendar using any collection of comics, pictures, quotes, scripture, etc. The project itself is pretty easy–but collecting the content and putting it together is kind of tedious.

What you’ll need:
* daily labels
*about 365 things to put on the daily pages (I ended up only having to put two dates on each pictures, because the comic book didn’t have 365 comics)
*copy paper
*glue
*spiral binding (or take it to your copy store)
*stiff cardboard
*colored paper for the cover

1. Cut your daily pictures down and glue them onto the copy paper. I decided to fold my copy paper in quarters and glued a picture in each section.

3. Cut apart your pages and put them in order. And then double check your order, because the last thing you want is for your calendar to be out of order!

4. Create your front and back covers out of your cardboard. Cut the front cover from card stock that’s the same size as the rest of your book. Decorate and laminate (optional). There are a few options for your back cover. One is just to make it out of stiff paper (I used corrugated scrapbook cardboard). This works well if the binding is going to be on the side. Or if you want to do a top binding, cut two pieces of the stiff paper the same width as your calendar and a few inches longer. Put the papers wrong sides together. Fold the excess towards each other so the back is now the same length as the calendar. Overlap the flaps and glue them together. Now you have a way to stand the calendar up.

5. Attach your spiral binding (or have your friendly people at the copy store take care of it). If you want a top binding, be sure you say this from the beginning (this is why mine is on the side…oops!)